January 23, 2012

A few wintered nights ago, the full Wolf Moon emerged from the horizon of Cape Cod Bay casting its yellow and orange upon the sea. It was a huge moon, the biggest I’ve ever seen, its size dwarfing the landscape and its light rendering the black January sky, almost palpable. A multitude of stars pierced the darkened heavens like peepholes into another, brighter world. It was beautiful.

I was there walking on the beach with one of my favorite companions, seven-year-old Alissia Rose. She has skin the color of rich Mocha Latte, a smile I get easily lost within and an innocent heart that is sometimes the only thing I can trust. She keeps me present and sane. On this night, she looked up at me in the way only seven-year-olds pondering the deep things of life will do and asked, “I want to catch the moon. How can we catch the it?”

“I don’t know. How can we catch the moon?” I questioned back, not wanting to admit I hadn’t a clue.

She squinted her eyes into the vastness before us where the moon hung suspended by unseen physics equations that belie its beauty, and excitedly exclaimed, “I know!”

“You do?”

“Yes, I do!” she repeated now jumping up and down and as certain as her seven-year-old heart could be about anything, then began to share her discovery with me: “What you do is get a moon ladder, put it up there against the moon, climb up it, put the moon in your pocket and climb back down!”

I was amazed by her brilliance and blessed by her creativity. And then a hint of melancholy crept in to threaten the moment. I was already heartbroken by her eventual disillusionment when she realizes that there are no such things as moon ladders and never will be. Life isn’t that simple or that easy.

We stood together there on the beach, each in our own separate worlds: she climbing moon ladders and me wrapped in my painful, practical cynicism. We were silent. Then it occurred to me that disillusionment might be one of God’s greatest gifts, if we allow it. Eventually, it replaces moon ladders with aeronautics and spaceships and makes dreams solid and real.

Later, we reverently placed a crystal pitcher of water on the porch where the moon’s rays suffused it with its light, then went to bed catching the moon while we slept.

In the morning she looked at me from across the breakfast table, raised her glass to her lips, smiled that smile that takes me to a gazillion better places, and drank.